


Never

by seiden_spinner



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Dreams and Nightmares, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, I'm Going To Pretend Uprising Never Happened, M/M, POV Hermann Gottlieb, Post-Canon, Post–Original Pacific Rim
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-16 23:12:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14175429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seiden_spinner/pseuds/seiden_spinner
Summary: Post-drift dreams can be pretty bad, as far as Dr. Hermann Gottlieb is concerned. Fortunately, they are just dreams.





	Never

‘We live as we dream – alone.’

He’s not sure who says that, not sure there’s anyone here to actually shape those words into sound. To be honest, he’s not even sure the concept of sound exists here, wherever this _here_ is. Yet still, the phrase rings in his mind and it rings true and false in the perfect simultaneity. 

It is tinged with color blue.

It hurts a lot, as well. He’s not sure, why.

It would be a great help if he could remember who – or what, for that matter – he exactly was.

Blue comes in waves flooding the entirety of him; it is cold and merciless and raging like the perturbed waters of the largest and the deepest ocean known to him.

‘–as we dream–’

The tide flows back; there is no tide, actually, there is no water in the immediate vicinity and no breeze that smells like salt. All he can smell is the scent of damp broken soil and flowers. He drops his eyes to see his own fingers wrapped around the flower stems – a bouquet, for sure. The petals are electric, vibrant, ravenous blue.

He gasps, hit by the realization, by the realization of it all. The flowers, the soil, the hurt – all of this makes perfect sense to him now. Immediately he wishes it didn’t. He wishes he still didn’t know who he was and what was happening.

‘ –alone.’

Dr. Hermann Gottlieb is standing at a fresh grave all by himself. And down beneath the soil there is– there lies–

The picture blurs; he can’t breath, he feels like he’s drowning, he can’t be drowning, there is no ocean here but the one inside of him, and it’s raging and merciless and cold, so cold, so empty, so–

Alone.

His whole body jolts and his eyes snap open and he sits bolt upright and his throat closes up and it hurts, it hurts, it hu–

‘Hey! Hey hey hey hey hey, whoa, easy, easy there, man. We don’t wanna fall off of this stupid narrow military-style bed, do we? Nope, we don’t, we won’t, don’t panic, oh god, oh god, where’s that freaking–’

And then there’s light.

And then there’s someone with his hair wild and his eyes wide behind the lenses of his glasses sitting askew on his nose. Someone who bears an excruciating resemblance to the man who doesn’t exist in this world, not anymore, he knows that, he knows that for sure, why else would he bring kaiju blue flowers to the man’s gra–

The nerve endings in his skin inform him that he’s grabbed by his upper arms, and then his vestibular system chimes in to tell him he’s being shaken – kind of profoundly, kind of wholeheartedly, kind of–

‘Breathe, Hermann! Come on, breathe, oh god, just start breathing, man, start breathing right now!’

His heart skips a beat, his throat unclutches, his lungs manage to draw in some air, and he can almost hear the sequence of switches flicking in his head, and then–

And then there’s Newton.

Dr. Newton Geiszler, his scientific opposite, his esteemed colleague, his dear friend, his drift partner, his _everything_ – there he is, disheveled and awake in bed not his own and tangled in the sheets and on the verge of panic and warm and breathing and alive.

Yes.

Alive.

‘I _am_ breathing, Newton,’ he says in a thick voice at last. ‘Stop shaking me, will you please.’

‘Oh god,’ the other man breathes out, dropping his hands right away. ‘Oh god, you’re the worst, man, you are literally the worst and I mean it. What was that even? On second thought, you know what? Don’t answer that. God, you’re gonna be the death of–’

‘Cease!’ He snarls, and there must be something about how he does that, because Newton falls silent immediately and tenses and looks like he’s about to massively freak out. That’s uncalled for, so he clears his throat and tries again, as softly as his vocal cords allow him to this time:

‘Don’t say that. Please don’t say that ever again.’

‘Okaaaay,’ Newton drawls cautiously. ‘I hear you, you’re strongly against me using that particular idiom for some reason, that’s okay, that’s fine, screw it, then, it’s not even my favorite–’

Abruptly the man cuts himself short, as if something has just dawned upon him. Something that has to do with an out-of-the-blue ban on the words generally considered non-profanity. Or with himself spending the fifth night in a row in the room not his own. Or with the fact the man has been using _we_ instead of _you_ and/or _I_ every now and then since their drift and subsequent averted end of humanity. Or none of that _or_ all of that, for that matter.

‘Your dream,’ Newton says slowly and even more cautiously than before. ‘While not being some sort of ours, did it, by any chance, feature me? Or, more like, the absence of me? Like, total, absolute absence of me, who has now got this whole euphemistic thing rolling because you seem to be kind of traumatized by certain D-words and myself put in the same sentence?’

So, it’s the “all of that” in the end. Theory confirmed, congratulations, Dr. Gottlieb.

‘Yes,’ he says, exhausted and relieved and grateful at the same time. ‘Yes, it did.’

‘Aw, man,’ Newton replies, pensive and sympathetic, looking like someone who’s about to engage both of them in a series of unsanctioned hugs.

Not that it would hurt, though. Not that he would mind.

He draws a breath and opens his arms – just slightly, more like a hint than an invitation but it’s enough, _of course_ it’s enough, because Newton catches whatever this is perfectly, unmistakably, and wraps him in what feels like a heartfelt embrace.

It doesn’t hurt indeed.

They sit a spell like this, silent and tangled in the sheets and each other’s arms, until Newton mutters against his neck:

‘I’m sorry, Hermann. I am so sorry.’

He doesn’t reply to that. He can almost physically feel the swaths of things unsaid between the two of them, even post-drift, yet he doesn’t have it in him to do just that. At least, not tonight.

But Newton does.

That becomes apparent shortly after wrapping the hug up, disentangling from the sheets, bringing the bedding into the state of relative order, and having a brief irrelevant conversation ( _‘Are we gonna give some sleep a try maybe?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Are we gonna need the light?’ ‘No.’_ )

They switch places in a wordless accord, him backing against the wall and Newton taking the edge of the bed. Some strategical shifting and knee-bumping follows, until they are as comfortable as their cramped bunk, never meant to accommodate more than one person, allows them to be.

It is then when he feels the breath on his skin, not covered with his undershirt, and hears the darkness say in Newton’s voice:

‘For what it’s worth, you’ll never get rid of me, you know.’

‘No doubt,’ he replies quietly. ‘I have you etched into my brain.’

_And I cannot tell whether it is a blessing or a curse anymore_ , he continues silently, all to himself, pushing the mental image of a blue bouquet as far as he can.

‘And it’s kind of a mutual thing, yeah, but that’s not what I’m talking about and you know that, don’t even try playing the dumb card with me, Hermann. That's never worked before – not that you've ever tried, though – and it’s definitely not gonna work now.’

‘I’m not–’

‘No one drives you mad like I drive you mad, we both know that. And I might be a jerk, like, occasionally, like, really occasionally, but I’m not a jerk enough to let you wither without me ripping every theory and approach and preference you hold dear into shreds. Not gonna happen, dude. Nah. Never.’

‘You’re making no sense,’ he replies, sounding like someone is choking him, and feeling his eyes burn. ‘Now please shut your eyes and your mouth and try to sleep.’

‘You heard me,’ the man says and gently kicks his knee for emphasis. 

‘Good night, Newton.’

‘Never.’

And that’s how they quiet down and eventually drift off to sleep. He dreams of the wet Berlin streets and coffee at the MIT cafeteria and chalkboards and microscopes and libraries and gigs, and it is good.

It is enough.

**Author's Note:**

> So, I listened to 'Another Time' by Lyriel some time ago and somehow got this strong "Hermann in the world devoid of Newt" vibe that just needed to be processed into a text for it to stop torturing me. And here we are. No direct quotes from that particular song, though.


End file.
